VIDEO: Mountaintop Removal is an American Tragedy

Mountaintop removal is an American tragedy. Plain and simple. The practice destroys hundreds of Appalachian mountains, contaminates drinking water and sacrifices America’s communities for small seams of coal. That’s exactly what actress and RAN ally Susan Sarandon has to say in our new video on mountaintop removal coal mining: This week, hundreds have convened in [...]

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Offical Notice: Cease Financing Coal

To: Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, PNC and Wells Fargo: We regret to inform you that this bank is being put on Notice. Effective immediately you must begin to cease all financing of coal-fired power-plants and related infrastructure. The Rainforest Action Network, our supporters and allies, being inhabitants of this planet, do [...]

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Citi Needs an Intervention

Addiction – noun \ə-ˈdik-shən, a-\: persistent compulsive use of a substance known by the user to be harmful. (Merriam-Webster) Citi has a problem. Despite renewing its vows in 2009 to tackle “Environmental and Social Risk Management,” including mountaintop removal coal mining, Citi is relapsing into fossil fuel addiction. Last year, Citi raised more than $34 [...]

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Dear Citi: You Have a Responsibility

Last week we got the news that Alpha Natural Resources had bought out Massey Energy, in a deal worth over $7 billion that creates the largest mountaintop removal coal mining company in Appalachia. Citi bank took the financial lead on this deal, a move that drew strong criticism. Here’s the transcript of a letter from [...]

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Goodbye Massey and Thanks For Nothing

After months of speculation, Massey Energy, the most controversial coal mining company in the USA, is no more. On Saturday Alpha Natural Resources announced that it had bought out the company in a deal worth $8.5 billion. That’s a high price for the stock – metallurgical coal looks lucrative to short-sighted investors as the competing [...]

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Putting Wall Street on Notice

Last week, RAN’s coal finance campaign released its latest report, “The Principle Matter: Banks, Climate & The Carbon Principles.” The report shows that despite adopting the Carbon Principles — once a much heralded “new path” for the banking industry — what we’ve seen in practice is still just “business as usual.” Along with releasing the [...]

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Cliffside Coal Plant: An Example of What NOT to Fund

Cliffside is a small town in southern North Carolina with a huge coal plant owned by utility giant Duke Energy at its center. Activists from around the southeast have organized and rallied and protested since a major expansion of the plant began in 2008. Unfortunately, despite the good work of climate activists to stop construction, [...]

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Banks Bail on Coal; Top 4 banks Cut Financing for Massey Energy

Two years ago no bank had a policy on coal mining, and Wall Street was providing finance and credit indiscriminately to the most destructive form of mining in the country. Bank of America, Citi, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo have successively passed public policies limiting their financial relationships with coal operators [...]

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New Reporting from Citi on their Mountaintop Removal Financing

In 2009 RAN urged Citi to stop financing mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining, the environmental tragedy that is destroying the Appalachian landscape and poisoning communities. Citi’s initial response, a statement on their website that the bank had “has implemented a robust MTR Environmental Due Diligence Process” was a disappointment to us. While Citi had at [...]

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Banks Ranked and Spanked on Tar Sands

As an ode to the  “rank ‘em and spank ‘em” strategy coined by our outgoing Executive Director Mike Brune, we proudly present the following roster of international banks backing expansion in the tar sands. The table below is based on credit extended underwritten by each bank to companies operating in the tar sands since 2007 [...]

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